He stopped about five feet away and said we needed to talk.
He talked about stress. About the difficult year they had been through. About what the trip had meant to my mother and how my check had felt like an insult rather than a resolution. He said maybe they had overreacted, but I needed to understand how things looked from their side.
Then he said the sentence that finished whatever small thread might still have been holding.
“You used to be so grateful. What happened to you?”
I did not answer. I walked back into my house and closed the door.
My husband was at the kitchen window. “You okay?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But I will be.”
Two nights later someone tried to break into my truck. Maybe it was random. Maybe not. The lock was scratched in a specific way, the glove compartment hanging open, nothing taken. The point of entry, not theft.
